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Sorry to Statler this up but these debates tend to produce mega posts and this is the best way I know to keep them manageable.

Originally Posted by rob19

Whether they’ve changed or not they’ve still been the primary parties in the United States for the past 200+ years. If you want to say they’ve been more consistent the past century, well, that’s still at least a century’s worth of established momentum.

Why would you continue to repeat that when I've already told you the Republican party is only 160 years old and was founded as a Northern, big government, anti-slavery party. There's simply no use in making these comparisons when only the name has remained constant. The issues could not have shifted more with the years, and if anything goes to my point, not yours... which is that these shifts being primarily driven by voters and circumstances.

Corporate interests, lobbyists, the military industrial complex, & foreign investors certainly have their impact & influence; there’s nothing conspiratorial about it, it’s fact. That’s not however what I’m insinuating. You said that just by virtue of being the two major parties, that they inherently reflect the consensus will of the people, when that’s not necesarrily the case. These parties are so well established & are viewed by the overwhelming majority of people to be the only two viable parties. So any issue that both major parties happen to agree on we’re stuck with, no matter how major, because everyone perceives there’s no other realistic, viable option capable of capturing a majority vote.

That is an interpretation, not an objective reality. You're essentially saying the major parties get together and decide to agree on things they know most people are against because there's nothing anyone can do about it. Sorry, too woo woo for my taste. Democracy is a ruthlessly efficient capitalistic system where even small margins are pursued with great enthusiasm. If there were winning issues out there one party or another would attack them.

Do we get to vote on war? No (see Vietnam), we don’t, but both parties are in agreement that being in all these wars is the correct course of action. Do we get to vote on indefinite detention of American citizens, or online spying? No, & neither of those things represents the consensus will of the people. These policies are the consensus will of 535 people + the president, not the entire populous.

It's a republic, not a democracy. What's your point?

And you once again imply these policies aren't popular, yet a Washington Post poll from early last year showed 70% of Americans approve of keeping Guantanamo Bay open, 83% favoring the use of drones and 65% approve of using drones even when the target is an American citizen.

You need to separate how strongly you feel about these issues from how the average person feels about them. You're making assumptions you just shouldn't be making.

You’re telling me the corporations donating to the campaigns aren’t expecting returns in the form of favorable policy?

I'm telling you those favorable policies are generally not unpopular. Where, as I said, is the movement to end farm subsidies, or oil subsidies, or to raise corporate tax rates? Where is it?

Pentagon budget alone was 717$ billion. +video

Quite a gumby act there, throwing in embassy guards, the Department of Homeland security (which includes the TSA, for example) the intelligence community, veterans benefits and interest payments on the debt into "war funding." Sorry, no sale.

He’s speculating 9 years into the future, & that may very well be the case, but as of 2012, 53% of the budget was military related, so even his estimated 33% figure is small in comparison. I’m not saying Health-care costs aren't a problem as well, but to act like everything else is “bull****”, is not really accurate imo.

He's not using the artificially inflated number you're using. You have to look at it the way he's looking at it to get an idea of the scale of debt health care is adding and going to add.

Looking ten years into the future is what the CBO does, by the way. That's always the way they make their projections.

Anyway, everyone knows that defense spending is going to go down. It needs to go down more but it's not a huge future driver of the debt. The budget proposal the video builds on actually proposed a cut in the Petagon budget of $484 billion over 10 years, though of course he forgot to mention that.